Historical Context Unit 4 Presentation

This is a link to my presentation  Presentation

Preparing for classical audition & Evaluation

For our final performance we were to be performing a classical play at the open air theatre in Brighton. For this we would either be performing a Greek play or an Elizabethan play. Out of the two plays my initial thoughts were that I wanted to be able to perform the Elizabethan play which was Dr faustus, I felt this because I had a better understanding of the play, from studying it in my alevel drama course.

For the audition we were to prepare a monologue from either era, I thought that this was a good opportunity to perform a comidey monolgue as I felt that this was the main genre that my directors have not seen my explore yet, so I thought it would give a better idea of what I can do.

I did some research into comidey monologues and thought that the best quality comedy scenes were from Greek comedy plays, as they were souls focusing on comedy, the monologue that I choose was from a play called 'the bees' and was set at a man defending his honour in a court room.

We i first began work on my audition piece I looked into just learning it in sections that made sense to the narrative, this involved splitting it up into three or four lines and learning them with meaning, then adding more sections as I went on. I felt that this is a good technique for me as I found my self coming up with movements and tones in my voice that fit the scene and character. Once I had worked my way through the monologue I just kept running it and seeing how the movements worked with the words.

The second time I did some work on my audition piece, my focus was on the classical wording of the monologue. This was mainly because my monologue of choice had a lot of words that were usual to our modern dialect. I did some research on words that I wasn't familuar with. One word that I was unfamiliar with was the "entreaties" this i was not familuar with so I didn't get full meaning when I said it. After researching the word I found that it means a 'Humble request'. By going through the monolgue with the words it gave everything full meaning do what I was saying.

For this audition on the day I left very prepared for my audition as everyone else spent their time going over their words, where I was prepared so I could sit and think about my characterisation and movement that I wanted to add, instead of going over and over the words to remember it.

For my audition I was really happy with what I did in the room. I went in with confidence and I feel that it showed that I was confident and passionate about the play that I wished to study. When performing my monologue I got thorugh the whole speech, and kept my movement imaginative and on the good and relevant. However if I was to get some more time on the monologue I would look into the comedy moment more, to get more understanding of the meanings. I got this from the reactions from the people on the panel. After I had performed I got asked the question of what characters was I most interested in? I said about a more serous character in the play as I felt that in my time on the course I haven't explored serious acting as much as I would have liked, and would like to take on some more serious scene and explore some more tough scenes.

1 Oepning page, elizaebthan era, who was she and when was it. she was a big fan of the parts.

she started a thing called the restistance which was a good thing to be in the arts, where as now its not as much and is contryvershal

she made it social and affordable

2

christohper malowe

what did he write, about him! only known for 6 years as he died at 29. Talk about him being a spy, and the myths.

awarded a masters arts degree, he was a contryvershal man, which is shown through his plays for example in faustus, and he was a atheist,

has been to arrested for murder but only for 2 weeks, which backs up his links with the goverment.

What did we get form his plays, the warnings etc



3

The legend of Faustus, from the bible there was a story of a magiain which made audiences confused about marlowe as he didnt believe in all of that stuff. In the play there are references to the german origins, example the V&C and the settings.

Our interpretations, what is the popualr in modern day which is music, like religion was in the elizabethan era. Music was seen as sinful. brings it to a contemporary audience.

4

Performance space,first theatre was on south bank called the theatre, they were all in the round and open air, shakespeare references the wooden O which is the open air theatres which were made of wood

talk of what was going on! throwing stuff,no women on stage as actors, differs to today. how did it effect our productions.

minimalistic.

why did i like performing in original performance spaces.

Times where plays were,faustus is a dark play it worked within the lightig change.


5,

Costume

ours was contrasting to the original productions, couliurful and raver props, some costume reflecting the opc for exapmle the masked to show certain characters, and quality of costume to show character

6

style of acting, it was melodramic which is simular to panto in modern day,this was to make sure that everything and everyone was seen. some of our scenes showed this, for example the sins, where we would over exaggerate everthing to make everything bigger.

7

Characters

Helen - may be a small part but showed faustus'weakness'and how he gave into everything and regrets selling the soul, also having a strong female characters to show dominance

Meph- making them female showed a huge jump in society where the most dominate roles were female.

Sins- we brought this up to date with costume and props,glottony had modern foods, sloth had onsie, modern ware and wrath had guns which showed modern issues around violence.

Old Man -  relecting faustus'life and how he may turn out.

Devised Dance based on a Stimulus

For our final dance performance for this unit we were allowed to choose what ever theme and stimulus for what we wanted to perform. To get the best grade i wanted to explore a style of dance that i felt the most comfortable with, so once i had decided to go with contemporary dance, i started to find a song. My favorite song that i found was a song by Netsky, called 'Forget What You Look Like'. I mainly went for this song as i thought that it had a variation of tempos in the song that i could explore.

The stimulus that i was to follow was the theme of betrayal between two brothers, i thought that this would work within a male duet as it would give us more reason to explore contact, which doesn't always come naturally in a male duet rather than a mixed gender. The main story line would be that one of the brothers is more successful than the other and throughout the dance it would all be very competitive between the two characters.

For this dance i got some inspiration from a dance choreographer called Conner Scott, he really explored very close proxemics and likes the dancers to have contact. I felt that this was key for our theme to show the battle of the two characters in the dance. We began the dance with simple motif that involves hitting arms on each other, which created a dynamic opening.

Throughout the rest of the dance we included some unison phrases, which i devised from some of the past phrases which incorporated some of my past devised performances from this unit. One section that i thought was really effective was in the build up in the song, where i was really pleased with how myself and my partner worked in timings, it started off with a spin, going into a floor work motif. To fill some time within the dance where there was not as much happening in the dance, i added a section were we would just walked around the performance space, where we were waiting for a section in the music, i think that this worked well as it showed a connection between the characters as we maintained eye contact but also kept the energy up in the dance.

Overall i was really happy with my dance that i performed, as i think that it really showed off the stimulus that we were exploring. For the performance i felt that i kept the character up well, and also showed a contrast between the two characters, me being the more dominate character and my partner being weaker, which was shown by my character pushing the other to the floor at the end.

Gernica Devised Performance

For one of our devised performances that we worked on, we looked into getting influences from a picture or a piece of media.The piece that we were given to work from was the painting by Picasso called Gernica. It was a painting that was based on the events of the Gernica War.

My first impressions of the paints, was how dynamic it looked, this was due to how much was going on in the picture, as there were faces coming out of all directions with a variety of pained faces. From this as a class we discussed all the different possible movements that could reflect these feelings. I thought that strong movements, with really clear facial expressions would be good to show of this theme.

We started to get our group dances ready by learning a phrase that we could include into our smaller groups, in different variations. This phrase was very floor based and had some very fast paced movements in it, i think that this worked well to show off the theme of war, as it made all of the dancers looked panicked.

We then got into smaller groups that we would be performing in. I was really happy with my group as i thought that we could work together to show some really strong emotions in the piece. We started off by thinking of a strong opening section to our piece. The best one that we came up with was to have all of the actors running into the stage as if they were trying to get away from something. This i think looked effective and worked well going into our next section, which was a section of freezes that show our characters emotions.

When it came to including the taught phrase, i wanted to change it up when putting it into our dance as i thought that i would fit better with the style of dance that we were following, with was a bit more physical theater. We performed this phrase in canon, with each other, and it also made the dance longer.

Devised Dance - Rock Challenge

A Link to our rock challenge performance at the Hawth Theatre - Crawley

Our main stimulus for Rock Challenge was the Oscar Wild story of 'Dorian Gray' This is a variation of the story of selling your soul to the devil. In this story the character of Dorian wishes that he could live for longer and be more desirable towards the women. For this performance i was lucky to be cast as the character of Dorian, which is the main character of the show.

Our story line follows the main points of the plot, and it started with Dorian with the other men and he was getting jealous of how much attention they were getting from all of the women. I showed this mainly through my facial expressions, but showing a sense of confusion, but i also showed this through my body language, by being a bit all over the place with my movements.

The next scene went on to show my character meeting his love, this was a duet with one of the girls in the company, who was playing the part of Dorian's love. I found this the easiest scene in the performance to show the stimulus and the themes of love, as i had performed with the girl before, so already had some chemistry to show my love for the character. We used parts of our original of our duet, that involved a lot of contact and close proxemics. this showed that the two characters were in love and showed their relationship blossom throughout.

The next point in Dorian's life was my character getting taken over by the devil and having all of the women crawl around for him, we showed this in a very stylised manor, having all of the girls posing around me and getting closer. This for me was the hardest scene to perform as it was the most out of my comfort zone, and had to show a completely contrasting character to what else was in the performance.

The next moment in the production i was slightly less involved in, this was the scene that showed Dorian's love killing herself for his love, we showed this through fluid movements to show the water drowning her. For this scene i was placed up on the set structure, and was dancing with one of the girls, in a saucy manor. This i think carried through the themes in every scene as the audience could see me dancing above as she killed herself below.

The final scene shows my character repenting and having a break down, as he finds that his love is gone,this was my favorite scene to perform in the show, as i got the chance to go wild and let myself go, i showed my character losing control through, big wild movements and not making everything small and controlled.

I was really please with my performance in the Dorian Gray dance, as i was on stage for the whole piece and feel that i help to keep the stimulus and themes of love and repenting flowing through out the piece.

Translating a play

The script that we used for our production of Dr Faustus, was from one of the original texts, as it was an English play, and its original text was in English, there have not been any translations of Marlowe's original play. So for our production that we performed at the Brighton Open Air Theatre, the words that I spoke as Dr Faustus were from the original production.


The only difference with the text in our production

Christopher Marlowe's Lifestyle amd the different versions of the play - Dr Faustus

Christopher Marlowe was born in London in 1564, this was only two month before one of the most famous playwrights Shakespeare. Marlowe was born into a fairly poor family, where is father was a shoe maker. His date of birth is unknown but he was baptised on 26th February 1564.


Marlowe wrote his first play in 1585/6, this was called Dido, this was a short play that he wrote and it told the story of the Queen of Carthage. It was an intense dramatic tale of her fanatical love. He then went to perform this play around London, and it became fairly famous within the town.


The next time that Marlowe was heard of was when he wrote his most famous play, Dr Faustus, this was based on the German Faustbuch. Marlowe's play differs to the original in many ways, yet the main being that in the end his protagoinist is dragged to hell by demons.


Marlowe's plays were massively successful and he went on to write more plays and also poems that are still famous and studied today.


Christopher Marlowe was known for being a ruff man, who was always seen for being up to no good, and in early 1592, Marlow was arrested in the Netherlands for counterfeiting money, it was also thought that he was over there to spy for the English government.


Later on that year Marlow was brought back to England, and carried on his life here, however he wrote no more plays, still thriving off of the success of his main play, Dr Faustus. Known for being involved in lots of trouble, he then a year later gets caught up in a pub brawl in Deptford, and his stabbed to death, and it is also thought that the men that stabbed him were government agents, getting back at him.


Not long after the death of Marlow, Dr Faustus was performed by Edward Alleyn's company, the Admiral's Men. they were on of the top running theatre performers and once they performed their take on Marlowe's Classic it then became an even bigger hit.


10 years later is when the play Dr Faustus was published in its first text, known and the A Text, later on around 1616 a second version of Marlowe's play, which followed the same storyline, however it had some different scenes in it. Now with the modern prints of the plays, it is hard to tell what version of the play it is from, as the years go by they have merged into one.

Dr Faustus Performance Evaluation

After my performance of Dr Faustus at the Brighton open air theatre, I was really proud of what I did on the day, over the whole process of this production I feel that I have been challenge more with this part than my other parts in past productions. The main thing that I was looking to do was show my Dr Fasutus character well throughout the whole show, which I feel that I accomplished.

When watching back the videos of Dr Faustus I was really please with how I kept up my character, this was mainly from my vocal work that I had looked into, as I felt that throughout the show I kept the voice that I had set for the character, which was a lower tone it my own and spoke slowly yet clearly, I found this apparent in all of my faustus scenes, and when interacting with other characters in the scene I could see that I was not only thinking about my lines that are coming up, but I was remaining in character during the scenes.

One think that I would have liked to improve on would be my characterisation in scenes that I am less directly involved in. If I was to get a second chance at performing the show, I would focus on my character in background scenes, where I was playing faustus, for example the horse coarser scene, when the character and Mephistopheles are interacting and I'm at the back I felt that I drifted off on occasion. To get over this I would set my character targets to achieve in each scene and at every point, for example 'listen in on what Mephistopheles is saying'. I think by setting the targets it would always have me in the zone and involved with the scene.

A postive of my performance would be my characters relationship with Mephistopheles when on stage. I tried to keep up a connection with this character in every scene that we were in togehter, this would go from keep close proxemics and talking, but even the same looks that we would give each other in a scene when something would go our way. I think that the audience really understood the character relationship that we were trying to make her, not only the relationship between the magic, yet the relationship that we interpreted, which was a flirtation between the two. I got good feedback from the audience after as they say that they "could tell that Faustus and Mephistopheles were always on the same page". I am glad that this came across.

Another one of my intensions for my character was to really show off the light and shade of my characters life, from going to the fun party goes scenes, then the sudden change to the realisation of the end of the life. I think that this interpretation was really clear in the one of the last scenes, where faustus enters, surrounded by his friends, and he is in his element and then as soon as they leave he sinks back into himself. I showed this in the show, with an obvious movement of my body, where I would compress my body language back into myself.

As the second half of the play movement very fast, which is when I play Faustus, as it goes from scene to scene, I wanted to show a change in setting and character relationships, one way that this was clear was with the different statuses of the characters that I was in interaction with. I would go from being with the Horse Couser, where I would be the bigger person over him, where I would use my voice to speak down to him and have bigger body language than him, then going straight into the duke scene, where I would have no authority to him. I would show this by a sudden change in physicality, which would change the mood of the scene sharply for the audience, rather than gradually feeling different with the different characters. I felt that this worked really well between scenes, and made it really clear to the audeince what sort of character would be entering next.

Another scene that I was really happy with was the seven deadly sins, I was happy with the scene, solely down to the audience reactions. This scene was very comedic, and brought the energy right up when it feels at a low, and I really enjoyed doing something funny as its what I feel most comfortable with. Every part of this scene had the audience getting involved in, either from laughter to wolf whistling, which I saw as a great reaction to see everyone getting involved as that is was the original performance would have been like.

Other than playing my main part of Faustus I was also involved in the ensemble parts of the show, this included dance numbers and ensemble work to show narrative. Although these were smaller parts in comparison to my main character I feel that when entering a scene I still maintained the same amount of character work and energy that I would have my other scene, one that stood out in reflection would be the opening number, this I feel was a great way to start the show, as everyone entered with enthusiasm for the show and it gave the audience an ideas of the show that we wanted to portray, which was very inclusive and kept the mood alive.

While playing Faustus and all of my ensemble parts, I felt i did everything well in performance that I set out to do, from maintaining character throughout, to showing off all of the intensions that I had for the different relationships for the characters

Shakespeare Festival Performance

For my performance I performed a section of Edgar's speech from King Lear, having known the ruff storyline of king Lear I found this a good choice to do for this performance, the audience for this performance is different to any other from past performances, as they were not paying to watch us and would not be seating around us. A lot like busking in the street it is unknown who or how many people would stop to listen.

Having this in mind when rehearsing and preparing my speech, I focused a lot on meaning and projection of my monologue. As audience would be coming and going during the performance, and some not even stopping to listen, I found it key to really empasis parts of it to draw an audience member in. As an audeince member I would want to watch something that not only start in a bold way, yet has moments throughout that make you want to hear more. During my speech my character has just escaped a battle and is hiding from the war. So he would seem paniced and on edge. I started with my body and how I would immediately show this to an audience member catching my gaze. I used sharp, sudden movements like scratching my arms and jerking my head to show my character fear and frustration. With my vocal skills I looked into different points in the speech that I could empasis words and add different levels in to draw in the public. Other than the starting line of "ive heard it proclaim" which I deliver with power and assurance, the is a section where my character discribes what he does to himself in order to hide, I said this in a harsh tone, yet projecting over everything else that is happening in the street, at the point in the speech is where I got a lot of interation back from the audience, as I could hear mumbles and could feel people eye contact on me. Throughout the speech I lower the pitch of my voice to a lower register, this created a character that seemed menacing towards other.

Over all I was really happy with the efforts that I put into my Shakespeare performance, and I feel that the time that I put into thinking of the elements that make up the monologue in order to draw in audience members and add depth to my character worked well. I also think that I tackled the different type of audience well, while trying my hardest in every performance to draw them in with every line, as well as battle out with the busy street market adjacent to the performance space.

My character interpretation in comparison to classical theatre

My performance as an actor and the production as a whole had some similarities and differences when it came to the original performance of the classical plays. One similarity I would say would be the style of language that we used, we stuck to the original script, only changing a word if it was needed to keep with our concept, but I would still speak in verse and prose were I found it necessary. 

However a difference would be the melodramatic style of acting that was applied to some scenes, in particular the scenes that were more serious in themes, for example in the transitioning scenes, in traditional Elizabethan theatre actors would just come onto stage and speak their lines to keep the narrative flowing, however in our production we made use of all of the scenes and moments to keep the scene flowing, one part in our play would be the conjuring up the devil and signing the deed. All of the ensemble members came onto the stage and performed a dance around faustus, this gave extra meaning and helped the audeince along with the narrative.

Another part in the play that we have adapted would be by removing all use of Latin speech in the show and any mention of religion. Our director saw this as a good idea, as it just played no help to carrying our narrative through. However in the original production everything would have been performed as to how the playwright wrote it, following all lines and stage direction if given.

When it came to interpreting scene, a lot of it was left down to us as actors, as the script that we were working from didn't have much stage direction in it. This then left us to add more moment of movement or physical theatre in. As few that stick out to me would be the scene entrances, with most of the members of royality and higher status than faustus we would all walk down the performance space parallel to each other, than meet at the front. This was our own interpretation and was not said I the script, but was something that we added to either add more meaning to a scene or add some diversity to the scenes.

Contrast between my roles when performing to an audience

When performing Dr Faustus and my Shakespearen monologue in shoreham, they were both very similar, where they are infront of an audience, however the difference was the different audiences that we are performing too.

When we were performing Dr Faustus we are performing to an audience that has paid to come and watch us perform, and who is mostly made up with people that are our friends and family. During this performance the audience would be seated, and would be spread around the performance space evenly. This type of audience have then chosen to be at this performance so they are going to be more likely to respond form the performance, either in a positive way, by clapping or sometimes in a negitive light. As an actor I prefer to perform to this type of audience as i would finder it easier to get an audience like this involved in the scene, whether it being a comedic scene like seven deadly sins in Dr Faustus or a deep, serious scene, like my character being dragged to hell. And as the audeince are seated when watching I can directly bring them into the scene, by eye contact, directing lines to certain members or breaking the forth wall

All of the key features of performing to a static audience like we are at the open air theatre, everything seems very different when performing at the shoreham Shakespeare festival. During this type of performance, I was placed in the middle of a busy high street, on a rostrum. Then the audience would not be paying for a ticket, or expecting to see me perform and would just be walking past and either stop to listen or hear only snipets. When performing to this type of audience I would make extra effort to invovle an audience member into the character and the mood of the scene. One way that I did this was to speak directly at them as the walked past, and raise my volume to make them seem involved, this worked in two ways, either it would incourage them to stop or it would make them feel uncomfortable and carry on walking.

Out of the two performance situations as an actor I felt a lot more safe when performing to the audience at the open air theatre, as I felt safe knowing that no matter what I had their attention throughout the scenes, however I felt it interesting in not knowing any of the audience in the street performance, as people would just walk past. This I could then link to an Elizabethan performance, where actors were really challenge to perform over what else was going on in the groundlings of the theatre, in order to get the audiences attention.

How were classical theatre plays performed to their original audiences

Greek theatre staging

Greek theatre runs from 700bc to 400bc. People would most likely recognise Greek theatre from using masks to represent lots of different characters, this was to show a sign of resepect for religious reasons and also it gave the actors a sense of privacy. For example if they were playing a character that was a antagonist, audeince would get so into it that anything in relation to that character would be bad. The Greeks would have a rule of only three actors on a stage and a time, they would then use the well known masks to change between characters in the scene, these masks were so big and decorated that actors would have to project their lines so much, so that audeince going to sizes like 30,000+ could hear them, this would also include them using big body language to make sure that every gesture and movement was seen by everyone

There were three main playwrights of the Greek era. These were Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides. These playwrights would be most commonly seen in an event called 'the festival of Dyonisis', which is the biggest event in the Greek calendar, where plays would compete in the festival. This festival would contain three different genres of play: comedy, tragedy and satyr.

All of the plays were performed in the Amphitheates, which was open air, and had racked seating, which was usually built into a cliff edge so that all audience members could see. The main theatre in Athens could hold around 30-40,000 people per show, this is a drast difference to modern theatres in the west end which hold around 1000-1500 people. The prime time for shows to perform in were, 1:00-4:30 as this is when the daylight was at its brightest. This was due to the simple fact that there was no non natural light to keep the actors lite when the sun went down.

Elizabethan theatre staging.

Elizabethan theatre took place in the reign of queen Elizabeth 1st. She was very famous for her love of theatre and art, and that is why that during the renaissance this was the prime time for art and history. Elizabethan theatre had lots of playwrights, who would write lots of different plays in different genres. However the two main playwrights were Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, who wrote our play that were are studying 'Dr Faustus'. 

There was a revolution during the Elizabethan era, where all theatres were to be moved out of central London onto the other side of the Thames, this is now where you can find the most famous theatres, such as the rose theatre, the theatre and the globe theatre. The globe theatre is probably the most well known theatre of its time and now, and much like the Greek theatres, it is open air, this would mean that all performances would be open to the elements and would still have to be performed during light hours. Within this theatre there were three levels of seating, and the higher up that you got, the higher the price of the ticket you would get. Much like today, there were a range of ticket prices and you would really get what you payed for. The lowest section of the theatre was known as the groundlings or the pit. This was probably the worst place to be in the theatre, as it had everything in it, from human waste, to bear baiting, all the way to prostitution. This is why you would only end up paying 1pence for a ticket in this section.

Theatre would be a much a quicker turn around than today, were you would see plays be performed for months or years on the westend, whereas in the Elizabethan times plays would only be performed once in the theatres, and would occasionally come back from high demand. This would mean that actors would only have around 5-6 rehearsals per show, to learn everything in it, this would be a very see what happens on the day situation. When it came to production everything was very simple in the theatres, and set would be kept to a minimum and set piece would only be brought on if really needed, for example a desk for Dr Fastus' study. Elizabethan went more out with the costumes, and would put a lot of time into getting big reactions to what they wore, there were also very strict rules about colour in the plays and a lot of colours were banned, and other colours would resemble different characters.

Modern theatre

In relation to Elizabethan theatre and traditional Greek theatre, I see modern theatre as a huge contrast, one example would be the tickets prices, where in modern theatres you would be paying £30+ for a ticket in a westend theatre, where prices would go up the better the seats are, which is similar to Elizabethan theatres yet tickets would start at a much cheeper price. This really made going to the theatre an event that was not for everyone in society, and less of a day to day event. However in Greek theatre all tickets to perfomances would be free, to keep everyone able to go, and making the theatre less of a status linked event and more an event that brought everyone together.

Development of Vocal and Movement skills to create Characterisation throughout the rehearsal process

Opening Chorus




In our first rehearsal we focused on the opening chorus, this we were all playing the part of raver and we enter the scene dancing to the song 'Fire starter' by prodigy. The direction that we were give was to enter the scene with energy and dance around the stage. I initially came into the scene with the character of throwing myself around the stage, looking like I'm letting myself go.  The opening chorus speech was split up into 4 sections that different groups would perform their sections out to the audience. I have the ending section, we spoke it out to the audience within the group, all in unison.




As the rehearsal process came on we came back to this scene, and we recapped the dance number at the start of the play. We felt this necessary as it is the opening number to the production and needs to be a strong piece, and because it was quite a different concept for an audience to understand, it would have to make sense from the start. I think that for a performance the key moments are always the beginning and the end, so with a strong opening number to bring the audience in from the start. One way that I explored doing this was to make all of my set movements bigger to make the stage look fuller. I think once everyone began to go further with their movement it really brought the scene to life and I began to feel confident with the scene.


As we got closer to the performance we then came back to this scene, having spent time on the movement and working on that to a solid level, we did some work on the text in this scene. As we were at a later point in the process of performance, everyone knew their lines for this scene and was off script. We explore different tones within the speech and different ways of bringing it to life. One exercise that stood out for me was one where we spoke all of our lines to the audience, while imagining that they were a group of children. I think by doing this exercise it gave the lines meaning and really highlighted for me what the key words were in the dialogue that helped the story to carry through.


Pope Scene


In the play this is the first scene where I play the part of Dr Faustus, were this scene now differs to the original performance is mainly the character swaps that we have had to do to help it fit our context. This scene is the first time that Faustus has a bit of fun with the powers that he was given, and in the original performance he travels to Rome to play some tricks on the Pope, however to bring this scene back up to date with our context we have made this character a representation of Simon Cowell, who is a big name in the world of music. This scene when we first blocked it didn't make a lot of sense to me, as the pace seemed quite slow, as it felt that we were waiting for each line to happen. I understand that as it was early on in the process when we first blocked this scene, so as were not yet off script, as a cast we were not 100% with our understanding of the flow of the scene and the script. To get over this I set myself the target to make myself a scene plot to follow, then this would give me something to study and base my characters objectives off, and hopefully help the flow and pace of the scene.


The next time we visited this scene we made some changes to the layout and how things would be set out in terms of the concept of the play. New additions to the scene would include: The addition of the Babes and Guards in the scene. This meant that instead of just tormenting the Pope figure in the scene it gave me other characters to focus on as well. I then split up my lines, and directed them to each character. I felt that this works as it gave me a path to follow in the scene, which also helped the pace of the scene, which had become a problem in earlier rehearsals.


As we got closer to the performance, and production elements started to come together, we introduced some props into this scene. Out of all of the scenes in my half of the play, this contained the most that linked directly to my character. One for example was the cream, that one of the babes squirts on their finger to tempt the Simon Cowell figure, I then run over to snatch it off of her and spray it all around the performance space. I felt this section come alive, as I ran around the stage causing mayhem. Another prop that helped was the Candy Bra that the other babe wore. Faustus is set to run up to her, in his invisible state and eat it off of her. Up until the final rehearsals I had to mime this action, which I thought lost all of the pace in the scene, so the addition of the relevant prop gave me something to play off and helped me to exaggerate all of my movements in order to make sure that the audience saw what I was doing to the characters in the scene.


Emperor Scene


The next scene that I had while playing Faustus was the Emperor scene, this scene also shows my character having some fun with his powers. Out of all of my scene this has the most dialogue in it, so it meant that the blocking was simpler compared to the others. To enter this scene we entered from the back of the stage, with my character and Mephistopheles entering from one side of the Skene and The Emperor and the Knight entering from the other, we walked down the thrust stage, parallel to each other. This made the start of the scene look very neat and tidy, as we paraded down the space. I think that this blocking was effective as it was a contrast to the other scene, which looked a bit manic, whereas this scene was in order, to reflect the contrast in status' of the characters.


As this scene is heavily relying on the speeches of the character to help carry through the narrative, this meant that as we rehearsed this scene more, it began to feel very static. The addition of the servants to the scene, which was not in the original text, this then gave the character of the Emperor a reason to move around the stage, as he would walk to his servants. This I felt broke up the scene, and allows us as actors to move around the space, rather than come out to deliver our lines, stationary, and then leave.


Horse Courser Scene

When we first got this scene it was my favourite scene out of all of them, i felt that from the start of the process this was a strong scene, as i stuck well to the dialogue and the comic timing. The main thing that i struggled with this scene was the understanding of the storyline, and it took me a while to understand the sarcasm of it. I think once it looked over the scene it became clear to me that the whole scene with the fake leg, that my character and Mephistopheles were planning a ploy on the Horse Courser the whole time, i think that once i spent time to understand the cause of the scene, the comedic timing and jokes within the text really began to play out to the audience.

When the props were made, for example the leg, this caused some problems within the scene, as the way that we planned to set up the fake leg didn't seem to work. so during one of our later rehearsal we had to come up with a plan on how to first set up the leg and also how it would be held and how the Horse Courser would get to it. The first solution that we came up with for getting the leg into place was for one of the ensemble members to bring it on during the transition number, and place it under neither the table so when Mephistopheles came over to put my character to sleep she would position this between my legs. This then caused another problem as i had to hold it between my legs, which caused me to have to focus on not dropping it.

When we finally got this scene into the performance space it think that it worked really well as it worked well with the amount of space that was given too us gave us the opportunity to really use the space and be able to travel around the space to give different locations within the scene.

Duke and Duchess Scene

Due to our cut down of the original text, this scene was a late addition to our production. When we first got this scene it felt a bit out of place within the rest of the place as it didn't seem to have any relevance to our concept.

During this scene to make it make more sense of the magic that 'Faustus' was doing on the Duchess in this scene, my character and Mephistopheles began to use subtle looks to each other, to hint the trickery that we were causing. i think that this helped as it made it clear to the audience what our characters intentions were.

Old Man Scene

This scene i think worked well from quite early in the process, when we first blocked this scene we did it outside of the rehearsal period, so when we came to running it within the rehearsal times, it seemed to be at. Higher level than the other scenes. When first exploring this scene we played around with including the rehearsal technique, mirroring. This worked well especially for our concept, as the character of Dr Faustus was double cast and the first faustus played the part of the Old Man, we explored the idea of the old man being a ghost of Faustus, and him coming back to warn him of his wrongs. The mirroring began with some basic movements that the old man could perform during his speeches, then I as Faustus joined in when I felt it right too. For one example of the mirroring,mthenold man had a line that said " draw tears Faustus" with this line we both reached for the others face.

As we got closer to the performance the rehearsals seemed to go very well for this scene, I felt that my self and the other playing the old man had a really good connection, and really worked together to create a powerful ending scene and draw all of Faustus' thoughts together.

Chorus Scenes

I also played the part of a chorus member, who took on the part of a raver, who would represtent the Devils in the show. During the rehearsal period more of these scene came together, and by the later rehearsals there were a few scenes in the first half that involved these characters. For example one that worked well in rehearsals was the devil scene during the Wagner and Robin scene, in order to frighten Robin there are two Devils conjured up, to chase him around the space. I played the part of one of these, to add a comedic flair to this scene, we set it to the 'Benny Hill theme tune'. Whereas in the script it is suggested to use puppetry. 

When we got to later rehearsals I think that this scene blossomed to a key scene in the play. As me and the other actor playing the devil, worked together to explore body movements and techniques to bring the scene to life. One of the techniques that stood out to me was: LeCoqs, Valley of the Giants. We used this technique to bring everything that we had set for the section to a different scale. This involved given everything another push, for example, when turning a corner I would really use my whole body to turn the corner, and exsaggerate everything. I think that this not only made our performances, more of a comedic moment, but gave the character of Robin who is being chased, something to respond off of.

Seven Deadly Sins scene

The final scene that we rehearsed that I was in was the seven deadly sins. This scene takes part in the first half of the play, so we began to explore characterisation quite early on. When we first set this scene the main focus was on the different characters vocal abilitys. We did an excerise that focused on different emphasis' on words in our speeches. For example one that worked for me was the word "pride". I really showed off this word, by rolling the R sound. I then linked it to the character by relating it to a snooty man, who would make everything that he says sound posh and better than everyone else. 

During the period of not focusing on this scene in guided hours, I happened to watch a different production of the play, who followed a fairly tradition concept. A scene that stood out for me was the Seven deadly sins scene. I think that this was because of their use of physicality. Each character would really push everything out of their characters in order to make them stand out from the other six. When we were revistitng this scene, I suggested that we looked into the blocking and movement of the scene again. When doing this for my section I added a movement to every line, and made everything bigger, I also applied this to other people's sections, if I was not directly involved I would just stand at the back and keep up my interactions with other characters and also always doing something. However we began to get involved with other characters sections, for example the glotteny scene, we would all be gathered round the character feeding him the food, and for my character I would be getting repulsed with his manner. Another section that I got involved in was Lechtry. My character was in love with her, so I walked over to her with a open mouth and kept very close to her. I think that by exploring these movements, and with the vocal work that we had earlier done, it created character that were all interesting for different reasons and everyone stood out in their own scenes.

Finale 

The closing scene to the play was Dr Faustus getting dragged to hell. When we first got our parts and scripts this was the scene that I was most worried about, as it is a strong scene which is mainly lead by faustus. When doing the read through there was some language that I was struggling with, as it was a lot of the time written in verse. This means that there is a certain rhythm to the speeches. One technique that helped me with this was setting the speeches to music or a tune. I just used a basic tune like Twinkle twinkle, by setting it to this it gave me something to remember when learning lines

For this scene in particular and most of the other scenes where I played Fasutus, my main challenge was keeping him manly. As my natural state is to keep everything quite light and jolly, however for the more serious scenes and more passionate scenes, this didn't seem to fit. I explored lowering the tone of my voice to give it a harsh, graspy edge. This gave the character a ruff feeling to it. For my physicality I focused on keeping myself grounded in the scene. One way I think that this worked for me was to think heavy thoughts and keep both of my feet planted on the floor, also keeping my jaw shut gave my face a manly feeling.

My Dr Faustus Characters

Dr Faustus

I play the part of Dr Faustus in the second half of the play, I was really happy to get this part as I thought that it would be a good challenge to myself as an actor, as it is a well known part that is very strong, dominate and masculine in the play. Parts that I have played in the past have been the opposite to this, and for this part I think that I will have to put more effort into my characterisation, particularly thinking about lowering my register and the tones that I speak with.

With this part in the show there are a couple of scenes that I would like to spend more time on when it comes to characterisation. The first being the Helen of Troy scenes, as the tone of this scene is very different to the others, as the characters get close to each other. This I feel would be mainly through working on the scene over and over again to get confidence with the lines in order to be able to play around with the movements to show the chemistry with in the characters.

The second scene would be the final scene, where Faustus is repenting his soul and being dragged to hell. I see this as a challenge as the tone of the scene is very dark, and with a lot of speach in the scene, I felt that it needs something to split up the scene in order to keep it rolling.

Pride

I also play the part of pride in the first act during the 7 deadly sins scene. I was really happy to also get this part as it is a huge contrast with then character of Faustus, and would also give me a chance to do some comical acting within the play. For this part, I'm going to looking into being very animated and over the top with the character personality.


Chorus


During the first half of the play I was part of the chorus, and participated in the group numbers, for example, I am in the scenes with Faustus that are significant moments in the characters life, like we music out breaks during our performance that breaks up the text.

First read through and understand the language

When receiving our parts and getting our scripts the first step is to do a read through. Having known the play before and have a good understand of the flow of the narrative I thought that I would use this opportunity to look into the words and the type of language that I would be saying in the show. 

The first thing that came to me from the read through was how late on in the play, I become Faustus, this made me think about how much the character would have done in his life until the point I come on.  This gave me an idea of how many years had gone past and how Faustus is now having fun with his life and what he does.

The second thing that I picked up on, was how different the type of language was, compared to modern speach it found it hard at first to get along with how the speach works and how it can be interpreted into conversation. A good technique that I have found That helps with understanding of the text is to translate the lines into modern language when learning them, this gives more context to the lines and also I felt helped me learn my lines.

The main types of language in the play are: prose, which is the basic language that involves the character just communicating with each other, for example my scenes with the horse couser, I would be speaking the dialogue to the character on stage and the audeince would just be listening to what we are saying to follow along with the scene. The second would be: verse. Verse is very common throughout the play of Dr Faustus, and came up a lot in my scenes, particuarly in the cross overs between my interactions with other characters. During these types of speeches, their is usually a set rhythm that you should follow and their are set breaks in the speech, whereas the prose sections can be broke up into different sections to add dramatics and tension. When performing I found it easier to bring meaning through the prose speeches, as I would choose whether to direct some lines out to the audeince or add in a pause. On the other hand when learning my lines and rehearsing I found it easier to learn the speeches in verse, as I would learn them as they are written and break them up into easy to manage sections.

Production roles

For my production role I was given the task of props and costume. To fit our theme of ravers and the DJ set up, I looked into bright colours and bold prints for our costumes. Like the pictures above. These I think would work really well for our basic clobbers outfits, which everyone would be wearing during the chorus numbers. I think that these costumes could also be used for most of the characters within the play, and just can be adapted with small items to define character. 

As I am playing Dr Faustus in the second half of the show, I thought about the costume that he may where. As it is later on in Faustus' life he would have more success. I thought of ways to show this to an audience, and the most successful that I came up with was to make a "Dr F" brand, with the logo. I made some shirts with the logo on them to show his wealth in the play, this matched with some basic clothes made it look quite expensive and also made it stand out from the other characters.

My second production role that I took on was the set and props during the play. I began by thinking how we can make a set, that still fits with the style of the theatre and goes of the tradition of minimalism in Elizabethan theatre. The theatre space that we are performing at has three skenes at the back of the stage, which we could hang some backdrops off them, I then went on to design the drops, it was mainly made up of the "DrF" logo with colourful splatters over it to fit in with the colour schemes that we are going off of.

Classical Theatre plays storylines.

Antigone

The story of this play is all about Power and rulership, before the story begins two brother have been fighting for the throne but they both die in the battle. This then makes Creon the new ruler, he then states that one of the brothers (Polyneices) shall be left unburied in the battle fields, and fed to the birds.

Their two sisters remain, (Antigone and Ismene). Antigone highly believes that Polyneices should have a burial, but Ismene does not agree in crossing the king Creon as those who disobey are sentenced to death.

Antigone then goes behind the Kings back and to sprinkle ritual dust over Polyneices body to allow his soul into the afterlife. The king soon finds out that someone has gone behind his back, and he sentences the 'Culprit' top death. Antigone shows pride in what she has done, and doesn't deny what she has done, even if the her sister tells her to deny her actions. she is then left in a cave to slowly die.

The blind prophet appears and warns Creon the Polyneices must be given a true burial and then he must release Antigone. Creon realises that he has done wrong after his only son disowns him. He goes to realise her but finds Antigone and his son dead in the cave, after they have killed themselves to be together. After all that Creon has caused he wishes death upon himself.

Dr Faustus

Dr Faustus is not happy with his studies in medicine, law and theology. He dicides to turn to the dark arts, and study necromancy and magic.

His servant then summons the great magicians (Valdes and Cornelious) they are the best magician and they are there to help him in his practice. Faustus is then in confusion about what to do and is visited by a good and bad angels who battle out for him to come to a conclusion.

After beginning the magic he conjured up the devils assistant (Mephistopheles), whom he makes a deal with him to sell his soul for 24 years of a free life, where he is able to do what he wants. He then signs over his soul to Lucifer by signing his blood on the deed.

Faustus begins to bargain with the devil, which brings back the angels to help him along, the then  leads to Lucifer coming and bring all of the Seven Deadly Sins before him. to make him realise all about life.

At this point Faustus becomes very wild in his life, and him and Mephistopheles go to Rome to play some tricks, while he is there becomes invisible and scares the pope and his friars. He then travels to Germany to visit the emperor who is impressed with his skills and asks him to prove his power to him, by summoning up Alexander and his paramour before him. The emperor is impressed with his skills and offers Faustus money in reward.

Next Faustus is visited by the Duke and Duchess of Vanhoult. Who he also shows off his magic too. He then fears that his life is catching himself up and he worries that his life has come to nothing. After playing all of these tricks he spends some time in his study where he is visited by an old man, who represents Faustus in a later life, who warns Faustus of all his mistakes, this brings fear on Faustus, who then conjures up Helen of Troy who he falls in love with.

After his night of passion with Helen, the clock begins to strike and he only has one bare hour left to live, he then repents to god to forgive him of his mistakes. After realising all that he has done wrong, everything catches up with him and he is dragged to hell by the devils.

Our Dr Faustus Concept

For out performance of Dr Faustus we are changing up the over all concept of the show, but with keeping the original text. Our follows Faustus as he thrives for more within the music industry. He is a DJ who wants to get fame from his art. In this he sells his soul to the devil, who is shaped as a 'hot young groupie' and he then gets 24 years to enjoy his life and have fun.


Over the years he go a bit wild and plays some tricks on lords, royalty and citizens. When the 24 years are up he then gets his life taken away and is dragged to hell. Although over the whole play we follow the original narrative, we have changed some of the character to fit our concept. 

Where Dr Faustus is a well known play, and has a very well known storyline, it is very open to changes and updating with the content that is in it. One of the main thing that we have changed is the overall concept which is about the music industry and the character of Dr Faustus being a world renouned DJ. This I think works as a concept, as it brings it bang up to date with an contempuary audeince. Giving them something to link to, and bring into their own lives.

Within our concept we have also changed some smaller details in the show, so being different characters, one that was a major change was the popes character, who we changed into a music producer figure, who follows simular attributes of Simon Cowell. This was a drastic change from the original performance, which not only linked and carryed through our themes yet added something esle to a scene that we could play off of.

Another scene that was changed would be the seven deadly sins scene, where words were changed in the script to add another element to our concept. For example during the Gluttony speech words were changed to popular fast food chains, this added some comedic elements to this character.

However I think the most significant change that was given to our concept was the use of recorded music, from sound effects to music tracks. Our production of Dr Faustus was highly reliant on the use of music, and we used it in almost every scene and scene transition. Some songs would help with the narrative and others are their to give. A break from the dialogue. I would label our use of music as our biggest adaption as it is far from anything that could have been done in the original performance, and that why I think It's important to do so as now in theatre we have the ability to use lots of different mediums to create a good production, rather than just our body's and vocals.